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NASA News

Space shuttle Atlantis returned home safely to the Mojave Desert following a 14-day, 5.8-million-mile mission to the International Space Station. It was the 51st shuttle mission to end with a landing at the Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Atlantis touched down on concrete runway 22 at 2:49:38 p.m. concluding a 13 day, 20 hour, 12 minute flight. NASA’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft will deliver Atlantis back to Florida in about a week so that it can be prepared for a December flight carrying the next laboratory module to the station on behalf of the European Space Agency.

The crew spent the morning in the world’s largest holding pattern as flight controllers kept a close eye on weather. Showers, thunderstorms and low clouds at Kennedy Space Center knocked Florida out of the running on both the first and second landing opportunities of the day, so flight controllers took their first chance at Edwards, where weather was pristine.

During Atlantis’ mission to the International Space Station, the crew performed four spacewalks during which they worked with the station crew to build the station into a near-symmetrical configuration, adding a new starboard truss segment and solar array pair, while folding another array in preparation for its relocation later this year.

Atlantis also delivered Clay Anderson, the station’s newest flight engineer, who will spend the next six months living and working on the station.

The next shuttle mission, targeted for early August, will see the return to flight of space shuttle Endeavour to deliver another segment of the station’s truss and 5,000 pounds of food, clothing, supplies and spare parts. Endeavour’s last mission was in December 2002.